As one would expect, the worst conditions resulted when faculty members joined forces with radical student groups. Nationwide, only 20 incidents of all types were reported at the 262 Army ROTC schools in School Year 1967. There were 30 in SY 68, and more are expected in SY 69, including the action to discredit ROTC at Harvard.
There have been some dramatic turn-abouts in the campus debates on ROTC. Fordham University provides an interesting example of how faculty support for an anarchist student group could cause ROTC freshman enrollment there to drop from a normal level of 274 in 1966 to an all-time low of 70 in 1967. This year, however, an aroused Fordham faculty so changed the climate for ROTC as to cause a 50 per cent increase in freshman enrollment at a time when enrollment was down an average of 24 per cent across the country. Further, as a matter of interest, the Fordham faculty is now contemplating the award of academic credit for ROTC, reversing a policy which caused Fordham to be one of only four Army ROTC Schools in the nation which had never granted academic credit for ROTC.
Contrast the Fordham experience with the vicious attacks at Boston University which caused this year's freshman enrollment in Army ROTC to drop 58 per cent, one of the largest losses in the nation. As a matter of interest, Harvard's freshman enrollment in Army ROTC dropped 37 per cent this year, also more than the national average; but the loss was more than compensated by a record-shattering gain of 308 per cent in Military Science III enrollment--largely students from the Harvard Law School.
Q. What alternatives are available if the ROTC program is discredited or driven completely from the college campus?
A. There is no acceptable program in existence at this time to substitute for ROTC as a broad-based source of college educated citizen-soldier leaders for our armed forces. About 45 per cent of all Army officers curently on active duty are ROTC graduates; 65 per cent of our 1st lieutenants and 85 per cent of our 2nd lieutenants come from the ROTC program. The Army ROTC needs 18,000 new 2nd lieutenants each year to meet normal attrition. We met that goal last year and expect to meet it again this year. For some years before that, we had serious shortfalls. There is little question that the current wave of anti-ROTC sentiment, unless reversed by exemplary action on the part of ROTC host institutions, will have serious impact upon ROTC production figures in the immediate future.
The anti-ROTC extremists apparently do not accept the criticality of ROTC to our defense establishment. They persist in the notion that the armed forces will continue to exist and perform their functions, somehow, without ROTC. The blunt truth is that Officer Candidate School (OCS) programs are not attractive to college graduates unless there is extreme pressure from the draft. One reason is obvious: the Army OCS volunteer must serve a three year tour of active duty, not two years as in the case of the ROTC graduate or the college graduate drafted into the Army as a private.
What about officer training programs such as the US Marine Corps' Platoon Leader Program which requires no on-campus training for college students? That program is not popular because it requires two summer training camps instead of one, plus three years of active duty. College men are increasingly reluctant to give more than one summer of their college years to officer training.
An OCS program catering to high school graduates and college dropouts as a primary source of junior officers for the Army Officer Corps is unthinkable. The armed forces simply cannot function--nor should they be expected to function in our complex society--without an officer corps comprised largely of college graduates, just as most of our national institutions these days rely upon college educated men for their leadership. Who is prepared to trust their sons--let alone the nation's destiny--to the leadership of high school boys and college drop-outs? Only the grossly uninformed or narrowly bigoted critic could fail to comprehend that the armed forces have a perfectly valid need for a fair share of the time and talents of the young Americans who have been blessed with a college education.
Q. What will be the effect if the various changes in Harvard ROTC programs being recommended for faculty action are approved?
A. Neither the heads of Harvard's ROTC departments nor military officers in any intervening headquarters short of the Pentagon have any authority to determine a reaction to changes in the ROTC programs which might be voted by the Harvard faculty. It is almost literally true that the negotiation of terms for ROTC units to be present on host institution compuses is handled by the civilian heads of the military departments. Just how far the Secretary of the Army, Mr. Resor, will allow institutions to go on eroding and vitiating Army ROTC programs on their campuses is open to conjecture. Although the mood of the three military departments is described as conciliatory and reasonable, there are certain limits clear to all with any knowledge of the situation, beyond which the civilian secretaries cannot be expected to go.
FACULTY STATUS:
In the matter of faculty status for service officers assigned to ROTC duty, this is a requirement of law. It follows that no one in the Department of Defense could possibly have the authority to waive that requirement. The Congress could change the law, of course, but the purpose of the provision in the first instance--insuring a respectable position and status for the ROTC program on every college campus, insuring that the program is not categorized as a college game--would be sacrificed. Is such a change necessary or desirable from the viewpoint of the military departments? It is extremely doubtful that the question would become a vital issue on more than a few college campuses.
The Army began last year to grant contracts for new Senior ROTC units to 15 selected colleges and universities each year. The first group of institutions included such schools as Brigham Young University, St. John's University of New York and other imminently respectable institutions. There are reported to be about 150 institutions of higher learning still on the Army's waiting list, each eager and willing to accept the contract terms which have prevailed for 50 years. Combined with low officer production and other reasons, this access to other college campuses might cause the Army to withdraw from some of the old prestige schools, however reluctantly.
INSTITUTIONAL SUPPORT:
In the matter of withdrawal of physical support--classrooms and administrative offices--by the institution, it seems quite clear that no military department could continue to operate a unit under such circumstances.
ACADEMIC CREDIT:
With regard to academic credit, the services are all known to be most anxious to retain academic credit as a mark of prestige and a matter of ultimate inducement in attracting young men to the ROTC programs. All services are known to be most eager to "up-grade" their curricula to satisfy the demand for "college-level" subjects. All services have some flexibility in this regard and are anxious to work with host institutions in search of agreeable compromise ground. The ability to do this varies among the services, however, largely because the Army is wedded--for better of for worse--to a two-year active duty obligation. Without being grossly imprudent personnel managers, we cannot afford to take six months out of the two years--25 per cent of the ROTC graduates' productive time in service -- to teach him the military skills which he must know in order to be an effective officer. With a three or four year active duty obligation to work with, our sister services can afford to teach their "officers" what is required to be an officer after they come on active duty.
Thus, short of a miraculous remedy that no one has been able to identify thus far, the Army must continue to teach some military skills while the officer candidate is still in college. Also, we are convinced from bountiful experience that we must conduct some kind of meaningful military training in the on-campus ROTC program in order to observe our students enough to make critical judgments about their leadership potential and aptitude for military service, hence their worthiness for a commission.
How the Army is ever going to disguise the purely military subjects in its curricula (there are two curricula in existence now and a third under development) to nullify the severe academicians who demand social science type subjects for officer training, is a problem of impressive magnitude. Personally, I am convinced that the problem cannot be solved completely without vitiating the Army ROTC program as it is now conceived. At the same time, I am convinced that there is sufficient validity in the Army's current Modified Curriculum, when evaluated intoto, to meet the academician's demand for college-level subject matter and to justify, therefore the granting of reasonable academic credit. My views on this subject are set forth in greater detail in a position paper I prepared for the anti-ROTC factions on 4 October 1968.
In summary, I believe that the withdrawing of all academic credit for